


Fear Itself

by Rockinmuffin



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Body Horror, Dark, F/M, Facing one's own mortality, Female Reader, Gore, Rape, Reader-Insert, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 12:54:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2388959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rockinmuffin/pseuds/Rockinmuffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think I’m dying.”  Your lips form the words but no sound is made.  It doesn’t matter.  The shadows need no words to hear.  They’re well-versed in the language of silent, secret things.</p><p>“You are,” he agrees, skeletal fingers brushing the bangs out of your eyes.  “You’re afraid,” he adds as an afterthought, ugly smile widening with the words.</p><p>“I don’t want to die,” you breathe and the exhale is bitter and painful and tastes like your own blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear Itself

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Rise of the Guardians Kink Meme:
> 
>  
> 
> _"Bit of an odd, and quite dark, request but could we have a fill where Pitch corrupts and turns the female reader into a fearling during sex, noncon is preferred but run with whatever comes to mind._
> 
>  
> 
> _Bonus points if it's in POV for female reader at first and switches to Pitch after transformation?"_

You’re scared.

You’re scared and hurt and can feel your own blood seeping between your fingers and you think you might be dying.

You don’t see your life flash before your eyes. You don’t see visions of baseball game peanuts shared with your father or the time your date stood you up at prom and how you spent the whole night with your face smothered in your pillow. You don’t see your first awkward kiss or your first fight or even your high school graduation. You just see a dumpster and grimy brick walls and cracks in concrete and blood blurred by shadows so thick even moonbeams can’t slice them.

You’re scared. You’re also in pain—a hole in the gut will do that to somebody. And angry—at the steel-eyed boy who saw no value in your life, at your purse for being bereft of money and mace, at yourself for running out into the night like you were something untouchable and immortal. But mostly, you’re just scared.

You’re scared of dying. You can’t die. You’re too young and full of too many regrets. You haven’t found your niche in the world yet and you never asked out that cute boy who works at your favorite coffee shop and the last time you talked to your mother you told her you hated her so you can’t die, not yet, not now, _not like this_.

You can’t be dying because everyone always told you stories of bright lights and pearly gates and beautiful things that made you want to _believe_ but all you see now is darkness.

“Help,” you want to scream but it comes out in a whisper, quiet and frail and smothered in shadows.

But the shadows must hear it because the shadows have ears. And a head and a body and eyes that glow like a harvest moon.

You watch with shallow breaths—because what else can you _do_?—as the darkness twists and twirls and molds into the shape of a man that is not quite a man because men are not born of shadows. He raises the hackles of his lips into a smile as he sees your throat quiver. His teeth are jagged, wicked things like rusty nails and tetanus shots. He glides toward you with a bone-thin arm outstretched and for a moment you think he must be the Grim Reaper come to collect.

He can’t be, though, because Death is cold and his hand feels so warm when it brushes your cheek. Or maybe you’re just colder.

“I think I’m dying.” Your lips form the words but no sound is made. It doesn’t matter. The shadows need no words to hear. They’re well-versed in the language of silent, secret things.

“You are,” he agrees, skeletal fingers brushing the bangs out of your eyes. “You’re afraid,” he adds as an afterthought, ugly smile widening with the words.

“I don’t want to die,” you breathe and the exhale is bitter and painful and tastes like your own blood.

“You don’t have to.” His hand on your skin is warm and firm and he can’t be Death because he’s promising life. “I wonder,” he drawls with voice like black velvet—dark and soft wrapping around you—“What would someone so fearful of death be willing to do to in order to prevent it?”

“Anything,” you say with your eyes because your lips are twisted in a painful grimace and all your energy is bleeding out your belly and sticking to your fingers.

You’re scared and hurt and desperate and, in that moment, you are drowning so deep in fear that you are willing to cling to any lifeline you can find.

You flinch as his fingers move from your forehead to stroke along the slope of your jaw. He stops at your mouth to brush his thumb along your bottom lip and you let out a shaky breath against the calloused skin. He bends down to your level, hooked nose and crooked smile and eyes like the tiger burning bright.

You forget to breathe when his mouth meets your own.

He bites your lip and forces warm sticky air that slithers down your lungs. At first you think he’s breathing life back into you, but the more it fills you the more it burns and chokes _and how could life hurt so much?_

The hands that hold your wound move to his chest and push and claw and dig crescent moons into his skin but your body is weak and his does not give. His body only takes; takes your bottom lip between his teeth, takes your hand and clasps it in his fist, takes your body and presses it down until you feel concrete scraping the flesh of your back raw.

“Why are you doing this?” your eyes ask and you know he hears you because his eyes gleam back at you but do not answer.

“It’s okay,” he soothes in a way that could be mistaken for tenderness; an almost fatherly tone that makes your stomach bubble with bile. You taste the words against your mouth and gag on them. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

It’s not okay. It’s _not_.

There’s a hole in your stomach and his forehead’s pressed to yours and his breath burns cold against your neck and his fingers are slithering along the curve of your collarbone and the curve of your hip like some terrible creeping serpent and _it’s not okay_.

You’re afraid of death but—and you freeze as you feel his fingernails skate under your clothes and scrape against your skin and for the first time you can see darkness moving and circling around you like something suffocating—you think you’re beginning to realize that there are fates far worse to suffer.

“Everything will be alright,” he says but even in the dark you can see lies peeking through the cracks of his teeth.

You flinch at the hand that presses your gut, the heel of his palm digging into the open wound. You feel the blood smear against your stomach as he moves his hand, prods the wound with his fingers like he’s stoking coals. It hurts. Hurts so much you nearly bite through your tongue because you don’t even have the strength to scream.

You want to close your eyes but you can’t. Fear freezes them open as black sludge leaks from the palm of his hand and fills the knife wound. You hiss between your teeth as it slithers through your body, strangling your insides. You see it in your veins; black spider webs weaving just beneath the surface of your skin.

It overflows from your wound, slowly coats your stomach, spreads further and further with each passing second and enveloping your body inch by inch.

It’s then that you realize you’re being devoured inside and out.

“Don’t worry,” he smiles, “Don’t struggle. It doesn’t have to hurt.”

The hand not prodding at your wound moves down your body, strokes along your skin in gentle motions. His touch is so light it tickles. You almost laugh but then his hand is below your waist and cupping you through your clothes and all you can manage is a wet sob before his lips are back on you and swallowing your sounds in greedy gulps.

His hand smoothly makes its way past your first layer of clothing. He’s rubbing you through your underwear, index finger lightly tracing the lower lips of your labia as his thumb circles the hood of your clitoris. It sends a spark of heat rushing through your body; fear and arousal blend together to shallow your breathing and blur your vision.

You whimper into his mouth and hate yourself for it.

He pulls back, just enough so that you can see his eyes flicker down to you. “Don’t focus on the pain. Focus on the way I make you feel.”

You don’t want to think about how he makes you feel because he makes you feel powerless. He makes you feel weak. He makes you feel confused and pathetic and hopeless. But more than anything else, he makes you feel so, _so_ afraid.

His finger breaches your insides and you clench your teeth, bare them in empty threat. You want to fight, to scream, to claw tooth and nail into the smooth expanse of his neck and collarbone until his blood pours from his wicked veins and mixes with yours, but you’re frozen. You’re not sure if it’s the fear or the blood-loss or whatever god-awful shadowy thing that is overtaking your body from the inside out, but any attempt to move your limbs leaves your muscles aching and your head dizzy.

Another finger invades and you bite your lip and suck in a sharp breath through your nostrils. It stings, but the pain is a distant, quiet feeling drowned out by the noise of your heart and lungs and mind. His digits dip in and out, in and out, stretching you with each pumping movement; slow, purposeful motions that move to the rhythm of your thundering heartbeat.

When he removes his fingers you feel relief, then dread.

“I don’t usually do things this way,” says the Darkness or Fear or whatever he (or it) is because all you know is that he can’t be human.

There’s nothing humane about what he’s doing to you.

You can feel his hands shuffling about somewhere near his hips as he continues to speak. “More often than not, I’m dealing with the fears of children. They scare so easy, but they’re frightened by imaginary things; things that can’t hurt them when they curl beneath their covers. Adults, though… their fears are real; corporeal. The fear of living, of being able to provide for one’s family and self, to be able to afford the small comforts of life like food and shelter and maybe happiness if one’s lucky. They’re afraid of the true monsters of the world, the ones that lurk inside the hearts of men.”

The flesh of his hand holds your hips in place, burning icy hot against your skin.

“And you… You’re afraid of the end, of your own mortality. Your fear is so strong, so genuine. Beautiful in its rawness and honesty.”

He leans in towards you and takes a deep breath in through his nose, crooked teeth gleaming through a crooked smile.

“It’s intoxicating.”

And with a quick thrust of his hips he’s buried inside you.

It doesn’t hurt; not the way you think it should. There’s a stretch of discomfort but it’s hardly the pain you expect for a violation of this magnitude. It makes you angry. It’s _supposed_ to hurt. How _dare_ this monster of a man take the time to prepare you, to try and ease the pain as if he actually cares anything for your comfort?! You grit your teeth at him because you’re brimming with rage and it’s all you have the strength to do.

His lips curl into something that’s not quite a grin and he barks out something that’s not quite a laugh. His breath is heavy in your ears and his eyes are heavy-lidded as they stare at your lips and he’s leaning closer and closer like he’s going to kiss you again.

You turn your head away, let his lips land on your jaw line instead. You ignore the way his pointed teeth nip along your skin, let your eyes and mind wander from one horror to another.

You stare down at your stomach, at the gaping hole in your gut, and where there was once blood there is only darkness that swirls and swishes and swallows you whole. You can’t see your own skin anymore, only living shadows that pour in and out and over you until you and they are one and the same. Your mouth opens but no sound escapes. You want to scream but the fear steals your breath away.

The teeth on your neck are replaced by spindly fingers that creep along the length of your throat. “Look at me,” he says, fingertips tracing spider web patterns across your pulse.

You rebel the only way you can. You clench your eyelids shut, for all the good it does you. There are shadows behind your eyelids and in the shadows you see only him.

His hand grips your chin, forcing your head to turn until you feel his breath tickling against the bridge of your nose. “Look at me,” he repeats, quiet but firm. When you don’t react immediately, you feel his fingernails dig their way into your skin. “ _Now_.”

You open your eyes—from shock, not fear, because you cannot be any more afraid than you already are—and a harvest moon gaze is staring straight back at you.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He smiles like the cobra before it strikes, all sharp-toothed and sharp-tongued and venom at the ready. But it _is_ hard, _it really is_ , because when you look up in his eyes you can see your own powerlessness reflected back at you. It hurts worse than the knife wound and the stretching and the darkness driving itself inside your body.

His nails no longer dig into your skin. Instead, they brush up in your hair to stroke along your scalp. A tune akin to a lullaby hums in your ear, paternal and wretched in its familiarity. It brings to mind late night stories and your father’s hands brushing your hair out of your face and how dare this monster taint your most precious memories!

Your eyes burn with the desire to tear but they’re all dried up. Your throat vibrates with rage but no sound is made. You can’t scream, can’t cry, and you’re so overwhelmed by how little control you have over your own body yet you have no way to vent that frustration. You’re staring out through the iron bars in your eyes; you’re a prisoner trapped inside yourself.

His hips rock into yours, deceitfully gentle movements that mask the true violence of his actions. He shouldn’t bother with such niceties. There’s nothing he can do that will make you forget what he’s doing to you. If he thinks pretending to care like a lover will earn your favor then he’s fooling no one but himself. If he really cared he would never do this.

Still, he continues the charade, kissing a path along your neck up to your cheeks. He presses his forehead to yours. “I’ll make you a Princess of Darkness,” he breathes and the tenderness in his tone makes your stomach turn.

You don’t want to be a princess of anything. You just want to wake up to find this was all some horrible nightmare. You want to jump out of your bed, run downstairs and beg for your mother’s forgiveness for all the awful things you’ve ever said to her. You want to tell her you love her. You want to go to one more baseball game with your father. You want to ask out that cute boy at the coffee shop and run dancing in the streets even if he rejects you because that pain in your heart means you’re human and alive.

Mostly, you just want to be anywhere but here.

You’re so overwhelmed with fear that the emotion begins to lose all meaning, fading away into an icy numbness that frosts over all thought and feeling. Your eyes are open but your vision blackens all around the edges. You’re not sure if that’s a result of the numbness or the darkness coursing inside you. You’re not sure if you even care.

His forehead presses closer and something like a gasp for air escapes from his lips. His hips move sporadically, shaking you beneath him as he strives to reach some sort of completion. He reaches out for nirvana but you just try to reach for any sort of end to the madness.

And then one last jerk of his hips hits something inside of you that makes the synapses in your brain sizzle and your vision go dark.

For just a couple seconds, you black out.

When you come to, you’re not afraid anymore.

You feel no fear or pain. In place of any emotion is a chilling numbness and a sense of emptiness; like all your insides have spilled out and bled into the darkness around you. You think you should be concerned but you can’t quite bring yourself to worry. After all, you’re not dead, _and isn’t that what you wanted?_

There’s a dry chuckle at your side.

When you turn to the man, he’s grinning. “Let’s go home,” he says and something about that last word makes your chest ache and it’s the most you’ve felt since you’ve opened your eyes.

He seeps into the cracks of concrete and you follow.

_Some nights, when the wind is silent and the moon sits high in the sky, Pitch looks at you and thinks he might feel something akin to regret. But then the moonlight is blocked behind a passing cloud and the feeling passes him just as quickly._


End file.
